Abstract: Tissue Engineering is a new and exciting
technique which has the potential to create tissues and organs
de novo. It involves the in vitro seeding and attachment of
human cells onto a scaffold. These cells then proliferate,
migrate and differentiate into the specific tissue while secreting
the extracellular matrix components required to create the
tissue. It is evident, therefore, that the choice of scaffold
is crucial to enable the cells to behave in the required manner
to produce tissues and organs of the desired shape and size.
Current scaffolds, made by conventional scaffold fabrication
techniques, are generally foams of synthetic polymers. The
cells do not necessarily recognise such surfaces, and most
importantly cells cannot migrate more than 500µm from the
surface. The lack of oxygen and nutrient supply governs this
depth. Solid freeform fabrication (SFF) uses layer-manufacturing
strategies to create physical objects directly from computer-generated
models. It can improve current scaffold design by controlling
scaffold parameters such as pore size, porosity and pore distribution,
as well as incorporating an artificial vascular system, thereby
increasing the mass transport of oxygen and nutrients into
the interior of the scaffold and supporting cellular growth
in that region. Several SFF systems have produced tissue engineering
scaffolds with this concept in mind which will be the main
focus of this review. We are developing scaffolds from collagen
and with an internal vascular architecture using SFF. Collagen
has major advantages as it provides a favourable surface for
cellular attachment. The vascular system allows for the supply
of nutrients and oxygen throughout the scaffold. The future
of tissue engineering scaffolds is intertwined with SFF technologies.

To read this article you will need to install Adobe
Acrobat Reader on your computer. Should you experience
any difficulty in reading the PDF file we suggest that
you save the file to your computer BEFORE opening it
from Adobe Acrobat.